After an old red barn was given "heritage protection" by the city council, the owner demolished it anyway. Many townspeople cheered the defiance of the council's blatant violation of property rights.
Since politicians increasingly use tax law as a means of regulating American life, the IRS has become a supercharged regulatory organization that goes far beyond just collecting taxes.
The Swiss constitution wisely puts a "date of expiration" on the central government's taxing power every 10-15 years. Voters have to vote "yes" to extend this power. Americans should demand something similar, both for taxes and for much more.
If government scientists claim that they have discovered a vaccine for the coronavirus, can the government force us to take it? Can they force us into quarantines? These are the sort of problems we can solve if we look to Murray for help.
Although consensus building surely is an important and noble pursuit, one would think that it wouldn't really fall within the purview of a central bank president. It’s been clear for a long time that allowing politics to influence monetary policy carries significant and numerous risks.
Why did Europe go from a poor backwater to an economic and technological powerhouse? A major factor was its lack of any centralized government, and a large number of small competing states.
The coronavirus impact adds to an already weak and bloated global economy that was showing poor growth, high debt, and an evidently disappointing earnings season before any epidemic was included in estimates.
There are echoes of the 1973 oil shock in the current virus scare and resulting economic seize-up. Central banks are likely to respond similarly: with "stimulus" and inflation.
Mayor Bloomberg is an antipopulist, and is thus, unlike Trump, a very polite and subtle authoritarian with alarming indifference to civil liberties and legal limits on his own power.
Today's rate cut of 50 basis points is the largest rate cut since December 2008, in the midst of the aftermath of the financial crisis. But Chairman Powell insists the US economy is "strong."
